We are a class of Year 3 & 4 children at Vardon School in Hamilton, NZ. The purpose of this blog is to share what we are learning with others. Click into our individual blogs to see samples of our learning and our reflections. WE LOVE LEARNING!!! We also love commenting, so please leave us a comment!!!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Caves

The Waitomo CavesWhat did you learn from our trip to these caves?

The Cave of Swallows in Mexico.This cave is 400m deep!PS - Do NOT try this at home!

We saw sinkholes on our caves trip. Look at these HUGE sinkholes in Guataemala.How are sinkholes made?

I had visited your blog as I saw you were looking to increase the flags of visitors in your collection but I can see Australia is already well represented. When I saw your post on Waitomo Caves, you caught my interest.

I have been to Waitomo caves a number of times over the years and always have been fascinated by the glowworms. While I have seen them in other caves I've visited, Waitomo Caves have the best display.

After seeing your further information on sinkholes, I thought you might like to know one much closer to Australia and New Zealand than Mexico and Guataemala.

Have you heard of the Minyé sinkhole and cave system? This huge sinkhole is found in New Guinea's island of New Britain.

The Minyé sinkhole is up to 510m deep at its deepest point and its connected cave is said to be over 5 kilometres in length. It is impressive and not as far as the deepest known sinkhole in China (662m).

The Minyé sinkhole featured in a recent movie, "Sanctum". This isn't rated as suitable for children to watch but showed someone parachuting into the cave.

While I have been in a number of smaller sinkholes, I have never been into really big ones. I think I'll stick to my favourite Waitomo Caves when I'm in New Zealand.